Detox retreats for health and happiness

The peace you are looking for

Vale de Torre retreats offer seclusion that's out of this world, in the foothills of the National Park Peneda-Gêres

The healing path your body needs

All retreats combine the subtle, powerful effects of a healthy diet, increased awareness and Mother Nature

The support that makes the difference

Help is on hand from Hans, Kate, Laura, your fellow guests and other residents throughout your stay

Healing retreats for reflection and recovery

A healthy diet works wonders.

Stop for a moment. Ignore all distractions. And imagine yourself on a healing retreat in the Vale de Torre in northern Portugal.

If you have been feeling unhappy and are not sure why, the Relax and Reflect Retreat will help you find some answers. If you have been suffering from chronic ill health and have exhausted conventional treatments, the Heal and Recover Retreat will show you how to manage your condition holistically.

Under the guidance of our on-site doctor, in just a few days, your retreat will:

Remove physical toxins with the use of herbs, homeopathy, acupuncture, diet, juicing, fasting and massage.

Release emotional and mental blocks through EFT, yoga, and meditation.

Help you establish a regime that you can continue at home.

When you return to your everyday life, you will feel refreshed, revitalised and re-energised. Happier, healthier and more hopeful than before.

The benefits of fasting

Fasting helps healing – fast

A 2014 study at the University of California showed that fasting for as little as three days can have significant benefits. Professor Valter Longo found that regular periods of fasting, for three to five days, stimulate stem cells to create new white blood cells and help repair damaged parts of the immune system. Prolonged fasting was also found to reduce the enzyme PKA, which is linked to ageing and increased cancer risk.

The fact that academic studies prove the benefits of fasting should come as no surprise – it has been used for millennia for its physical and spiritual healing qualities. Hippocrates, Socrates, Plato and Gandhi all fasted. As well as promoting inner peace, they will have found fasting:

• increases energy

• improves sleep

• reduces pains and aches in the joints and muscles

• improves chronic health conditions, including autoimmune

• decreases anxiety, tension and depression

• improves bowel function

• boosts the health of teeth, skin and gums

• helps shed excess weight

The earliest text that promotes fasting is probably the Essene Gospel of Peace, discovered in the Vatican library and published in 1928. In this fascinating document, Jesus encourages people to go into the forest to fast and cleanse, as a way of regaining their spirit and a body free of disease.

Spiritual Homeopathy

Homeopathy is a deep-acting healing art on a physical and spiritual level. In spiritual homeopathy, we integrate old karmic patterns, behavioural patterns and past-life traumas that plague families and can filter through our present lives. Much of our present-day neurotic behaviour and general mental imbalance originates from suppression of the natural healing mechanism of our body. With the correct choice of homeopathic remedies, we can reactivate these bodily processes and facilitate proper healing on all levels.

Bach flower remedies are just one of many healing techniques available at Vale de Torre

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT)

“The cause of all negative emotions is a disruption in the body’s energy system”

Gary Craig, founder of EFT

EFT works with meridian points to stimulate the energy system of the body. Like acupuncture, but with fingertips instead of needles. The technique can help in many ways – relieving pain, removing stress, resolving past traumas and modifying beliefs that no longer serve you. It changes unconscious patterns that you may have lived with for a long time, leaving you feeling stronger and more confident about the future.

In your EFT session, we will discuss the main issues you would like to work on. These could be old traumas, carrying your psychic body like weight, dealing with pain, or releasing emotions that are preventing you from being happy and relaxed. EFT is an easy, powerful and effective self-help tool that you can do anywhere. We will provide you with material to take away with you, so you can continue “tapping” when you go home.

To really make large changes in life, you will need to do regular tapping. An extra session of EFT can be booked while you are here at Vale da Torre to help you get started (not included in the price).

Morning stretch, yoga practice and meditations

How does a Tibetan bowl healing sound?

Vale de Torre’s yoga-inspired practice will help to stretch your body, relax your mind and deepen your breathing in daily life. The postures massage your internal organs and have a detoxifying effect on the body. Breathing exercises are an important part of the process and have great healing potential. Paying attention to your breath – and deepening your breath – helps your body work more harmoniously.

Calming the mind will be practised further in the evening meditation sessions. Different methods will be used, such as guided meditation and sound meditation with Tibetan bowls, so you can discover which is more effective for you.

Healing with sound

During our normal waking state, the frequency of our brainwaves is that of beta. The sound of Tibetan bowls leads the brain to the deeper alfa and theta frequencies, which induce deep meditative and peaceful states. Sound has been shown to relieve, stress, depression and chronic fatigue – after a Tibetan bowl session, one has a deep sense of tranquility and great mental clarity.

Food for thought

Some foods are more super than others

Making organic raw rice milk, sprouting, juicing and preparing raw vegan or vegetarian meals at Vale de Torre is a communal celebration where we can all share our knowledge and experience. You can harvest recipes, ideas on urban gardening – and plunder the library for further information.

The 21st-Century food chain has been polluted by numerous toxic and gene-altering substances, including mercury, aluminium and fluoride. These neurotoxins are seen by some as the main causes for the increase in Alzheimer’s, autism, MS, behavioural problems, cancer and other crippling diseases. The widespread use of GMO foods (such as corn and wheat) and pesticides (such as Roundup) are also suspected of causing problems from food intolerances to infertility.

Your retreat at Vale de Torre will show how you can help protect yourself simply by eating a wholesome, healthy diet.

Our holistic philosophy

For most of us, life is a treadmill of chores and obligations. Our energy is wasted. Our attention diverted. Our actions become habitual, including how we work and what we eat.

Take our daily bread, for example. In the West, eating food made from wheat has long been considered normal – even healthy. But in fact, most people have an intolerance to wheat. Everybody suffers mood swings when they eat it – and in sensitive individuals, it can lead to manic or depressive states.

It’s the same with milk. Most people think it’s good for the bones – with all that Calcium! But actually, research has shown the opposite and milk drinking is related to auto immune problems.

Vale de Torre offers you the chance to break habitual, unhealthy patterns of diet and thought. To reorientate. To reevaluate. To remember what is really important for you. Our experience with conscious, wholesome living, natural healing and the subtle but abundant forces of Nature will help put you back on the path to health and happiness.

A few words from Kate

Our therapies are here to help you discover those hidden facets of the diamond you carry inside.

I will be mainly involved in nourishment – from the growing to preparation of tasty organic meals, juices and snacks. You are free to join me in the garden whenever you like. It’s such a wonderful creative and meditative process.

You can help with with ponies, too. Lindsay Fovargue and Pam Billinge from Findhorn put the benefits of this beautifully: "Horses are acutely attuned energetically. They respond to us more fully when our mind, body and spirit are connected. They are extraordinarily accurate 'mirrors' of internal processes: emotion, intention, contradiction – and amazing 'amplifiers' of the energies they perceive. In this they demonstrate how we can become more present, more potent and more alive."

Both of these activities harmonise so well with the Tibetan bowls massage you will enjoy. Laura, brings so many gifts to help you let go and release. With her talent to stay centred while others go through their challenges. Using EFT, she helps find blocks in your subconscious, which are also reflected in the body.

She has also created a lovely relax and stretch, yoga-inspired practice and meditation. It is like an easy yoga with a lot of smiling. To help you relax and release, she also offers massage.

And finally, one of the greatest benefits of our retreat is that we have our own in-house medical homeopath.

Hans will provide you with an in-depth consultation.
After going through any relevant analyses or blood tests that you may wish to present, his focus will be spiritual homeopathy. This is a form of homeopathy that looks at the many different aspects and levels of being human. From the psychic, emotional body to the spirit and etheric body.

This school of thought, inspired by a medical shamanic homeopath, has deepened Hans’s knowledge of the human conscience. This comprehensive and dynamic form of homeopathy is a swift and gentle way to cleanse body and mind, dealing with family diseases, and emotional and physical tendencies.

It is beautiful to see people transform, like a chrysalis in to a butterfly.

Medical palmistry, and other techniques that stimulate healing, will give you the chance to take charge of your body. To own it fully. But that’s not the only reason to choose the Vale de Torre for your retreat.

Just being here, embraced in the arms of Mother Nature – surrounded by the fields and trees, with the soundtrack of the birds and the rushing stream – will help restore and replenish you in ways you can’t imagine.

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If there is anything you would like to know that is not covered in this website. Or you would like some more information before committing to a retreat, please ask.